Seattle Times Reviews Jason Walker at BAM

“Jason Walker: On the River, Down the Road” (through March 1, 2015): Nature and man-made landscapes are in pitched battle in this satirical exhibit created especially for BAM. This is Bellingham artist Jason Walker’s first solo museum show, and it consists of eight ceramic installations.

Some are sculptural in feel. “Redtail” portrays a deer realistic in shape and proportion, but fanciful in color scheme. It has a highway going down its back (complete with ceramic cars and trucks) and scenes of industry (wind turbines, a hydroelectric dam) painted on its side. Humankind isn’t just imposing on this creature’s habitat; it’s woven into the very fabric of its being.

The same could be said of the two crow-like birds in “Split Down the Middle, but One Always Wants More.” They’re guarding a nest built from iron rods and metal gears, rendered in painted porcelain and stoneware. But instead of fledglings, the nest contains a superhighway with ceramic cars moseying down it between urban high-rises and a rural landscape.

The largest pieces resemble elaborate shrines. “Cascade” surrounds a painting of a lone wolf in a sylvan setting with semiabstract industrial shapes that all but overwhelm its quiet central scene. “Down the Road” serves up a surreal high-rise landscape with a highway at its center that turns into a waterfall pouring over a human hand. Tumbling cars and highflying creatures/objects (a seagull, an airplane) inhabit a frenetic world that’s spinning toward entropy.

Walker’s work has an innocent, colorful surface appeal. But his playfulness grows progressively more barbed as you pick out all its details. This is dandy stuff, with a simmering anger behind it.